Innovation is deeply embedded in PubMatic’s DNA and is the cornerstone of our culture. For over a decade, our internal hackathon has served as a launchpad for transformative ideas, bold experimentation, and boundary-pushing collaboration.
This year, we celebrated the 11th edition of the PubMatic Hackathon on May 6-7, 2025 and it turned out to be our biggest and most impactful yet!
Unprecedented Scale and the Power of Cross-Functional Collaboration
We witnessed incredible engagement across teams from Engineering and Product to Business Operations and Client Services. With 100 teams and over 420 unique participants, this was not only our largest hackathon ever but also the most diverse in disciplines and perspectives.
The cross-functional collaboration was a key driver of innovation. Teams brought together diverse expertise from design and development to product strategy and business operations to build solutions that were not only technically robust but also practical, scalable, and ready for real-world impact.
Over an intense and inspiring 48 hours, these teams ideated, built, and demoed their solutions live for our panel of judges. The results were outstanding: the quality, polish, and innovation of the final projects set a new benchmark, making it incredibly challenging for the judges to choose the winners.
This year’s hackathon spotlighted three strategic themes shaping the future of our industry.
Generative AI (Gen-AI): Transforming Experiences and Driving Impact
It was particularly exciting to witness the increasing role of Gen-AI across the board. Over 56% of all projects leveraged Gen-AI technologies – a compelling indicator of how rapidly this capability is being adopted.
This past week has been amazing; we transacted a whopping 331.3 million tokens in just 7 days, an average of over 47 million tokens per day! This scale of usage reflects not only the enthusiasm across teams, but also how deeply Gen-AI is being embedded into tangible use cases across our ecosystem.
During our recent hackathon, teams harnessed the power of Generative AI to accelerate innovation and prototype development. A variety of cutting-edge tools and models were utilized, including:
- Gen AI-powered IDEs: These intelligent development environments streamlined coding workflows and boosted productivity.
- OpenAI and Gemini Models: Teams experimented with a range of models, including those designed for advanced reasoning and problem-solving.
- Agentic Frameworks: Several teams adopted agent-based architectures to build fast, autonomous prototypes capable of handling complex tasks.
The combination of these technologies enabled participants to move from concept to prototype with unprecedented speed and creativity. It was a clear demonstration of how AI is transforming the way we build and innovate.
From intelligent recommendation systems to automated support tools and AI-driven analytics, this year’s Gen-AI-enabled projects were not just futuristic but highly relevant and poised to solve real-world problems. At PubMatic, we proactively adopt Gen-AI to build smarter platforms, automate workflows, and elevate our customer experiences.
Monetization: Unlocking New Value Streams
Teams explored innovative ways to generate and optimize revenue for both our customers and partners. Whether through smarter bidding strategies or yield optimization, the focus was on delivering measurable outcomes.
Observability: Building Trust Through Transparency and Reliability
High-performing systems require deep visibility. This year, teams focused on elevating system observability to ensure greater transparency, reliability, and performance. From proactive monitoring to advanced alerting and diagnostics, the projects reflected a strong engineering culture centered on operational excellence.
Looking Ahead
The 2025 Hackathon reminded us, once again, why we do this every year. It’s about more than building cool things, it’s about nurturing a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
As we look ahead, we’re excited to see many of these ideas come to life and shape the future of digital advertising. A heartfelt thank you to all participants, mentors, organizers, and judges for making this event a resounding success.
